"Free the Fobbles! For Two" is a new game released for the iPad only and available for FREE. As the name suggests the game is for two. Before telling you a bit about the game, it is quite interesting to know a bit about the developer Philipp Lenssen. From what I would know of him is that he has a site called http://versuspad.com Now this is a wonderful source of information on the games that Philipp has been involved in and most of them are multi-player (2 or more) and aimed at the iPad. The quality of the games have far preceded Philipp and I recall looking at Ogs as it was a game made with PhoneGap which means it is a game developed in HTML and javascript. Another things worth mentioning here is that almost all of the iPad games here are FREE. it almost seems that Philipp has taken up to making iPad the preferred platform for multi-player gaming, btw the iPad is indeed a very good sized multi-player gaming platform. It is hours of fun with family and friends.
So, what is "Free the Fobbles" all about? Fobbles are small pebbles that originate in two distinct colours. They are unhappy when captured and they jump and dance when freed. The Fobbles were up in the sky for skywood, they got stuck there and you are to save them. The aim of the game is simple help the Fobbles free, and this is achieved by clicking on the pieces of skywood that are on the screen. Each time a piece of skywood is clicked, it disappears, thereby freeing the Fobbles/Fobbles stuck by that piece of skywood. There are stones that can also block the Fobbles, on close examination the stones are of two types, one with black markings and one with white markings. These are the family stones of the Fobbles (I guess) they allow the Fobbles of the same colour as the markings through and restrict the others. The two players take turns in getting rid of a piece of skywood thereby releasing the Fobbles. The player that gets their Fobbles free wins.
The game is a lot of fun and it can be played in rapid successions or with a slow strategic mind. The graphics are simple but yet very highly polished as most of Philipps games are. The game is made in CoronaSDK which lets the users use Eric Catto's Box2D libraries with a very few lines of code. I spend a little time trying to look at the extras that Philipp has in the game, things that do nothing for the gameplay but add to the whole feel of the game are the clouds in the background and the geese flying in the horizon.
The Fobbles are a bit too loud for me, so had to put them a bit quieter while playing and the dance at the end that the winning team of Fobbles do is quite entertaining.
Overall, this is a game that has used CoronaSDK very well and produced a very good multi-player game that will help relieve quite a few hours of boredom and allow a challenge.
The way Fobbles is different is that the true potential of this game is when played in competition with another player. I can well imagine this game being redeveloped with Surface SDK and being made available.
It is FREE, so if you have an iPad, head over to http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/free-the-fobbles-for-two/id422251217 and get it today.
SUMMARY
Software : Free the Fobbles! for Two
Version : 1.0
Publisher : Philipp Lenssen
Website : http://versuspad.com/
Platform : iPad
Price : FREE
iTunes Store : http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/free-the-fobbles-for-two/id422251217
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The game is made with CoronaSDK using the Physics engine, in essence for those that would like to make something similar, this is quite easily done in CoronaSDK. Do not undermine the work and expertise put in by Philipp but if you are well versed with CoronaSDK, you can see how easy it is to make that game in theory.
The skywood are randomly placed rectangular pieces along with stones set as static physics objects. Fobbles are circular objects that are physics bodies of type dynamic. The skywood are removed when touched and the stones are set with collision filters so they restrict certain types of Foobles through. Now to think that if the same were to be made using Objective-C or other frameworks how much work would that involve. Using CoronaSDK it is that simple.
I cannot stress enough and would be curious to know how Philipp has done the geese animation, are they sprites or scripted objects and the victory dance, It would be so good to see that code (if Philipp posts it on the forums)
ENDNOTE
Some other software from Philipp that you might be interested in for multi-player challenges
Spikeball for Two
Ogs
City Bucks
Knights vs Knightesses
The Rosewell Game
Behaviourix
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